[en] The novel The Uncomfortable Dead, written by subcomandante Marcos and Paco Ignacio Taibo includes a scene which describes a football match between the indigenous inhabitants of Chiapas and the foreign observers which sympathise with the Zapatista cause. This scene can be interpreted in various ways: as a metaphor of the struggle in Chiapas between the Zapatistas and the government, but at the same time as a mise en abyme of the plot of the novel, which tells the story of two antagonistic gangs, one of them attempting to occupy the other’s territory. In addition, the football match can be associated with the act of writing the novel, and more in particular with the collaboration between its two authors. In the other text which marks the return of the Zapatistas on the political scene in 2005, Marcos also makes use of imagery related to football, which is one of the primary means of affirming the collective Mexican identity. In this way, he presents the Zapatista army as pre-eminently popular, because it shares with the living forces of the nation one of the most important markers of Mexican identity. At the same time, as football is one of the most universal forms of popular entertainment, this imagery is also fit to capture the sympathy of an international public.